A Heart That Betrays My Mind…

I warn you in advance that this post is difficult for me to write…difficult because I am in need of expressing that which can’t be fully expressed or explained. I will explain how I feel, but in a contorted way; a method designed to forbid me from telling “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” so that only an essence of those feelings will be understood.

So how do I begin this?(Ok you guys have no idea how many times I’ve typed and erased..typed and erased…so I’m just gonna go for it now)

Nothing has a beginning or an end…it is all a series of events that later on in the future will make sense, but right now is just a mind fuck!!! I have had several relationships in my life, but only 3 significant ones. Strangely enough…(I just noticed this now) the number 3 seems to be a recurring pattern in my life at the moment.

But back to the point.For a brief summary…I will start with my first love:

1- I was madly in love with an older guy, an age difference which at the time was pretty major and unacceptable among a conservative people. I guess you could say he was my first love. It was that one love that is so intense…so sensational, that every touch, every look, every word doesn’t feel like enough to express the mad emotions rippling through your heart. You tell each other every moment of everyday ‘I love you’ because you feel like saying it is the only way to give this explosion of feeling some kind of release. I know it probably sounds ridiculous and unimaginable. But it was true and it was real for us at the time. I can honestly say that I have never had a man love me like that man loved me. The only reason why we broke up was because my parents decided to leave Portugal to come here to the UK and I had no choice. My world shattered. My heart felt like it had been hit. By a truck. Those really freaking huge trucks. That weigh tonnes!!

Being in that situation, where we both knew we had a very very limited time left with each other, knowing there was a clock that was ticking that just wouldn’t fucking stop and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it, is something I wish would have only occurred once in my life!! If our feelings for each other were intense before, they doubled, tripled!!! We literally spent every possible waking moment with each other. I know it sounds terrible but he ended up failing his last year of school because he just missed every single class. Which now thinking about it, I should have slapped him right across the face for doing such a stupid thing. But the time came, the day I had to say goodbye to him. I should mention that a break up due to one person falling out of love or just because it is a mutual agreement to break up, hurts like a bitch, but nothing hurts more than being forced against your will to leave someone you’re madly in love with, and who loves you with the same veracity.

So we said goodbye, I remember it all so clearly. This was 6 years ago now. Seeing that man cry broke my heart…the whole drive (yes, drive!!) from Portugal to the UK I spent on the phone – when my battery died, I used my sister’s, when hers died I drained my mom’s and then my dad’s phone until all phones died. Anyway, a few weeks later he would call my mom several times crying, begging us to come back and if there was any possibility of us ever going back. My mom didn’t have an answer for this. We were trying to make a living, wherever that had to be.

What I will always remember until the day I die was the incredible pain I was in for the first six months. I wouldn’t get out of bed…I would just cry and cry and cry…I couldn’t believe a body could release so much liquid at such a relentless speed. My mom would sneak into my room at night when she heard me crying and just held me until I fell asleep. I felt like I was going crazy…and believe it or not I found myself scratching the walls (Yeah..I know I’m insane, 🙂 thank you) There was no going away from this…this despair…this unrelenting ache. It got so bad that I lost my appetite, I wouldn’t eat, I lost so much weight I was literally on the verge of becoming anorexic – which is when my family began force feeding me (not in a mean or aggressive way at all by the way) and I would want to vomit just by having food in my throat, forcing the food down was horrible…so horrible. I looked terrible. I was a train wreck…My skin started getting really bad and my bones a little bit too visible. This was around the time that James Blunt’s song ‘Goodbye My Lover’ came out, and we were all in the lounge watching TV when this song came on, and all of us, dad, mom, sister and of course myself included just all began crying ..and I mean sobbing…the type that is just wet and snotty and totally unattractive 😛 So until this day, if that song ever comes on, we turn it off immediately. We just can’t hear it. I love them for feeling my pain. I always will. The lyrics in that song described my situation perfectly. It couldn’t have been a more appropriate song. I am actually going to share it with you now, just for memory’s sake.

I just forced myself to listen to this…my whole body has gone goose pimply and my heart aches. Music will do that.

So I decided…in fact, I promised myself that this could never happen again. I simply could not allow myself to feel that pain ever ever again. Whether this meant that I would never allow anyone that close to me again, or whether I have relationships but remain closed up, or be affectionate but keep this very visible wall around my heart. I can safely say, I have managed this successfully, so far. The pain that came with the next 2 were actually two very different kinds of pain – different from each other too. Strange how love can be so exhilarating time and time again but be so damn different too!! Makes it kinda hard to protect yourself, you know?

There are a few elements of this story I have left out, because they are too personal, but the general idea of what it was is there.
To conclude the story of this particular relationship, we tried to make it work for a few months, but we all know long distance relationships never work in the end. So we broke up. I tried to move on with my life, I had school to go to, I made friends, but I would still occasionally talk to him online, but he unfortunately was and still is cyber illiterate…nothing about computers or the Internet makes sense to him, which can be quite hilarious when you see him trying to type on the webcam that his friends had to set up for him 😛

Closure: This was a key element to finishing it off completely. I couldn’t just live on knowing I left him behind and that afternoon on 19th August 2005 at 3.45pm would be the last time I ever saw him. So after four years, I was finally old enough to go back to Portugal by myself, and I had to see him. We met up. He looked exactly the same…which was surreal for some reason…he hadn’t changed at all. But my feelings for him had changed. Big Time. He had a girlfriend when I went there, and he broke up with her while I was there. He had said he would wait for me, and he was waiting for me. But I told him I had moved on with my life..I had to!! It had been 4 years!! He should have done the same!! We met up several times while I was there, just talked and talked and talked..I knew I had no romantic feelings towards him at all. He noticed this…and eventually he drove to where I was staying and in quite a desperate demeanour said to me:

‘Chris….just tell me that you don’t feel the same about me, tell me you don’t want me. I can see it in your face..in the way you look at me. Tell me, so that I know. I won’t get upset, I just need to hear it from you…from your mouth, right now!’

I ..well I didn’t know what to say!! I stuttered and just stared at him…but his face looked so desperate for an answer that I had to give it to him, and knowing him like I did, he just needed the peace of mind to finally move on. So I said:

‘Ok…I don’t feel the same about you anymore…you will always have a place in my heart, but I mourned you when I left, it was like you died, so I moved on, I had to.’

…and his shoulders sagged..he just stared at me for a few minutes without saying a word…(God, that moment took me straight back to the last time I saw him) and then he said ‘Thank you. Thank you for telling me. You’ve helped me, trust me.’ And we hugged and hung out for a bit, and then he left….we saw each other again temporarily in my old home town…spoke but both were in a hurry and that was it. We used to send each other a message every year on each others’ birthday, but we stopped that, and to me that signified the true end of it all. I needed that closure. It was vitally important. Now I just remain with the beautiful memories and the very few photos of the man that never hurt me – never cheated, no other girls mattered to him, made me feel what I had never felt before, made me feel like the centre of his Universe and gave me a love I haven’t yet had again. Full Stop.

…I had meant for this to be a ‘brief summary’ which has ended up much longer than previously planned, so I will write about my second and third in the coming posts.

I actually began writing because of Person Number 3…but the above came out first…which I guess will make more sense once I get to what is present in my life right now…I hope I can make it that far…because what I am sharing is incredibly close to my heart. To be continued…:)